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Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

laphamsquarterly.org

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Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#171

Post by scythe »

banned1 wrote: post #43
komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News. NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth. In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's up to you to make up your mind.…

CNN is more pro-status-quo/pro-Third Way than "left" in the traditional sense. They're markets-and-welfare nationalists really, but in the original, less frightening sense of "nationalist". I read Reason and The Economist plus additional assorted liberal media. It's still bad but at least there's variety without having to sift through as much crap.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#172

Post by unethical_ban »

systemvanilla wrote: post #129
Dobbs wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how NPR and Fox News can be compared in good faith. Yes NPR has a liberal bias, but for the most part it attempts to reasonably source its articles and publish a journalistically accurate news report. Fox News is not a news channel. They have one or two news programs mixed in with "entertainment". Sean Hannity is not news, but entertainment pretending to be news[^1]. [^1]: https://www.dailykos.com/storie…

NPR is known by pretty much every right-of-center person in the nation as being the Fox News of the left. If you're left-of-center you have a stake in NPR's skewed coverage being the neutral truth (because that validates your world view), but it's just not the case. The bias isn't necessarily in the sourcing or the facts, it's in the selective coverage and the constructed narratives and the overt bias in what kind of…

That's horse shit. I listen to npr a lot, and yes, they have narratives. Of all the happening in the world, there is daily a story about someone who happens to be overcoming the adversity of homosexuality, or being of color (not colored).

But that choice in coverage does not compare to calling editorial entertainment news, or flat out lying to their listeners.

The big difference is when I really think NPR screws up a story, or is too far left, I write them and feel like someone might listen on the other end. Good luck with that on Fox.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#173

Post by intended »

eloary wrote: post #90
wu-ikkyu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Business news sources tend to be clear headed, because they are in the space of news you can put a dollar value on, and hence will pay for to make more accurate. It also pays to put out dishonest hit pieces against competitors, or dishonest reviews of your own products to make them seem better than they really are.

We get to see those because they're advertising. That's the whole point of "you have to pay." When I read a hype story about a company someone else is paying. Really good, cheap or free info about the present and future tends to lie not in a consumer paper but in dense, wordy PDFs that are cast offs of internal researchers at major multinationals and government bureaus. Those documents are often released to tell inve…

Uh, I'd be parsimonious when choosing which reports to give attention and credence .

Within the industry there is a herd tendency.

Results of models which are far off from others get tweaked. Once data is sufficiently in line, only then does it get reported.

I agree to this though, there's going to be a dense PDF somewhere.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#174

Post by lz400 »

RodericDay wrote: post #50
pdubbs90 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the BBC and the Economist good for this reason. They are/seem a lot less biased than U.S. stuff through some combination of higher standards and that they'd rather manipulate the emotions of Europeans than Americans (and I am an American).

The Economist is not an unbiased publication. It exists for the explicit purpose of arguing for the liberalization of markets. edit: classic anti-left liberal, not "american progressive" liberal

To a certain extent, yes. But they have plenty of articles where they argue that governments need to step in and regulate this and that. It's markedly different from true libertarian sources like the Mises institute, etc.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#175

Post by colanderman »

Maybe I'm dumb, but I can't glean the meaning of this partial (verbless) sentence?

> Not the outcome envisioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but the one raising the question addressed in this issue of Lapham’s Quarterly.

Lapham’s Quarterly is highly regarded, so I would expect such non-sentences – especially at the start of a paragraph, complete with a drop-cap – to be culled by the editor (or author, who is in this case the same person). Or am I just not intelligent enough to understand this style of writing? (Even inserting a well-placed “is” does not clarify this sentence for me.)

Aside, I’m surprised the article doesn’t touch on why fear is so delectable to the American palate. I suspect it’s that humans expect fear, like how we expect work, pain, hierarchy, and other objectively unpleasant things which we seek out when lacking, to restore balance to an otherwise saccharine existence. Americans in fact have very little to rightly fear, thus our lizard brains instinctively latch on to anything to fill that void in our lives.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#177

Post by banned1 »

okaram wrote: post #149
systemvanilla wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NPR is known by pretty much every right-of-center person in the nation as being the Fox News of the left. If you're left-of-center you have a stake in NPR's skewed coverage being the neutral truth (because that validates your world view), but it's just not the case. The bias isn't necessarily in the sourcing or the facts, it's in the selective coverage and the constructed narratives and the overt bias in what kind of…

NPR may lean 'left', but it tries to be journalism (Fox News is entertainment and propaganda); if you want to find something like the Fox News of the left, check DemocracyNow, or ThinkProgress

Often, it's more activism masked as journalism.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#178

Post by debaserab2 »

banned1 wrote: post #145
debaserab2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really disappointing that you list an outlet like Breitbart with all the other reputable publications you name in an otherwise well formed argument. What a sad state of affairs when we've legitimized a publication that identifies itself as central to the political movement that's brought together the xenophobes of our society.

It's a good point. Thanks for making it. I do read everything, including fringe publications. In the continuum of publications, everybody will find their tolerance for unacceptable to be different. Thanks for your honest comment. I did think about your point before including it. Edit: and i am sorry for offending you.

Oh - I'm not offended at all - it's just disappointing that it's many people's observation that the bias of historically reputable media outlets allow it to be lumped in the same category as a fringe publication. I don't think there's anything wrong with learning from or reading a fringe publication.

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#179

Post by evolve2k »

evolve2k wrote: post #61
komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

Check out 'The Conversation' https://theconversation.com > Who we are The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public. Our team of professional editors work with university, CSIRO and research institute experts to unlock their knowledge for use by the wider public. Access to independent, high-quality, authenticated, expla…

You might want to try:

https://theconversation.com/us

(As the .com is more Australian centric)

Re: Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product

#180

Post by adrianratnapala »

tormeh wrote: post #70
komali2 wrote: post #37

I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy. That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk. Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missin…

The Economist is good, if you can swallow their ideology It's very open about it, but it does not conform to most people's idea of what news should be. Süddeutsche Zeitung is good in Germany space, although it may do a bit too much of normal and national news.

I agree with both of these, though it is hard for me to read German, so I rarely finish whole articles in SZ.

The Economist's ideology has become pretty mundane, they have drifted left over the years, and while they still defend free markets, they do it from a technocratic almost social-democratic point of view.

It should all be very much in line with what blue-state American's already believe, though perhaps from a perspective that is a bit eye-opening.

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